What's the Difference between Being Busy and Working Hard?

Do You Work Hard?...Really?...I Don't Think So.

January 30, 2014 

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I want to conduct a little experiment.

I'm going to make a true statement and then you're going to analyze your reaction to it. Ready? Here we go...

I, J.T. O'Donnell, work much harder than you do - and so do a lot of other people.

There. I said it. How are you feeling? What was your initial thought? Did you agree? Did you feel offended? Angered? Sorry for me? Did statements start running through you head, such as:

• That's not true.
• It's not fair.
• I bust my !@#$ more than anyone.

And, I bet you eventually concluded with:

You have no idea how hard I work.

Am I right? I hope so. Here's why...

The Truth Is Subjective When It Comes To Hard Work

If you go back to the beginning of this post, you'll see what really intensified your reaction was me prefacing it by saying it was "true." I made it clear I believed it 100%. Which means, when I said it, I was implying I'm better than you and deserve more than you.

Now, I don't think for a second that I work harder than you.

Yet, the above demonstrates how one person's truth may not be yours. Especially, when it comes to how hard you both work. (For example, here's an article that shows how working hard doesn't matter when you are competing against hundreds of other candidates.)

The Problem With "Hard Working Americans"...

I wrote this post to make a point: many people today are "working hard" and feeling like they're getting shafted. Granted, times are tough and the working class is struggling. Every news broadcast and Presidential speech discusses "hard working Americans" - and they're right.We're all working hard! But, my issue is they use it to fire everyone up in a way that I believe is counterproductive. They imply we all automatically deserve more, and their effort works.

Because, let's be honest...

Aren't we all guilty at times of thinking we work harder than others? And, doesn't that make us prone to thinking we deserve more than others too?

See the problem this creates?

I think it's very similar to a marriage. When both spouses think they are contributing more than the other, they often end up divorced.

Okay, So If Everyone Is Working Hard, What's The Solution To Getting What You Want?

In my experience, people who are happiest in their careers work hard because of the way it makes them feel. Yes, they want to be compensated and recognized for their achievements, but those aren't their main motivators. Instead, they work hard because they are internally motivated to do so. They get their main reward, a/k/a satisfaction in doing the work. They feel grateful to have something to do. And, most importantly, they have found meaning in what they do. (This article discusses in detail how important it is for people to understand the impact of their work on others as a way to feel happier and be more productive at work.)

A great example is my 72 year old mother. She has enough money to retire, but still works three days each week as a nurse in a elderly care facility. Some of the residents are younger than her! She is adored by patients, their families, co-workers and management. They have told her they never want her to retire. And, she has said she'll work as long as she can because of the joy it brings her.

Your Turn: How Are You "Working Hard" Towards Creating More Meaning In Your Work?

I'd like this post to be the start of a larger discussion around ways people are taking ordinary jobs and making them more meaningful. I'd like to as readers to share in the comments below:

1. What steps have you taken to make your daily work more meaningful?
   
2. Do you think your job has to be directly meaningful, or does working to pay the bills so you can do other things that are meaningful seem like a better option?
   
3. Why do you think people continue to let themselves get caught up in the, "I work hard and deserve more," mentality instead of finding ways to create more meaning?

I look forward to seeing your comments below!

P.S. - First time reading my posts? Thanks for taking the time to stop by! Not only do I write for Linkedin, but I'm also founder of the career advice site, CAREEREALISM,and currently run the career coaching program, CareerHMO. I hope you'll check them both out!

Why Governments Defeat Themselves

If you have to worry about politics; if you have to worry about someone stealing your credit; if you have to worry about your boss not having your back, think about the energy you have to invest not in your business, not in the products you're trying to develop; not in your work; not how great you're producing; not in your creativity but just keeping yourself feeling safe - it's destructive.

Modern politics is leader-centric.  It's the job of staff to have the boss' back with the full expectation that, should the need arise, they will be sacrificed to protect that boss.  Political organizations and bosses at all levels often see their staff as expendable; it's politics, there's always more demand than there is supply.  If you don't measure up you're gone, don't let the door hit you on the way out.

None of this is should come as a surprise; it is, in fact, a science.  But when the boss can do no wrong, then science is a distraction.

Ever wonder why it is that governments religiously defeat themselves?  Wonder no longer.

A Conscious Society: Simon Says

Wouldn't you like to work in an organization in which you have the absolute confidence, the absolute knowledge that other people who you may or may not know who work in the same organization as you would be willing to sacrifice themselves so that you may survive?

Isn't that a world we'd all like to live in?

Here's the tricky part - it doesn't happen on it's own, and nobody is going to tell us to do it.  

It's all on us.

Universal lessons of the Holocaust

As parliamentarians from around the world gather in Poland on this anniversary of anniversaries, there are a number of lessons of the Holocaust to bear in mind.

Holocaust survivors at Auschwitz Photo: reuters

On Monday, the largest-ever parliamentary delegation to Auschwitz will mark International Holocaust Remembrance Day. I am privileged to participate in this visit, which will occur at the confluence of important moments in Holocaust commemoration, as it will coincide with several meaningful occasions of remembrance and reminder:

• The 65th anniversary last month of the Genocide Convention – the “Never Again” convention – which, tragically, has been violated again and again; 

• The 65th anniversary, also last month, of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights – the international magna carta of the UN – which, as former UN secretary-general Kofi Annan said, “emerged from the ashes of the Holocaust,” and was intended “to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war.” In Annan’s words, “a UN that fails to be at the forefront of the fight against anti-Semitism and other forms of racism, denies its history and undermines its future”;

• The eve of the 70th anniversary of the Holocaust of Hungarian Jewry; and 

• The aftermath of the 70th anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising.

As parliamentarians from around the world gather in Poland on this anniversary of anniversaries, there are a number of lessons of the Holocaust to bear in mind.

The first lesson is the importance of zachor, of remembrance. For as we remember the six million Jewish victims of the Shoah – defamed, demonized and dehumanized, as prologue or justification for genocide – we have to understand that the mass murder of six million Jews, and millions of non-Jews, is not a matter of abstract statistics.

For unto each person there is a name, an identity; each person is a universe. As our sages tell us, “Whoever saves a single life, it is as if he or she has saved an entire universe.”

Conversely, whoever has killed a person, it is as if he has killed an entire universe. Thus, the abiding imperative: We are each, wherever we are, the guarantors of each other’s destiny.

The second enduring lesson of the Holocaust is that the genocide of European Jewry succeeded not only because of the industry of death and the technology of terror, but because of the state-sanctioned ideology of hate. This teaching of contempt, this demonizing of the other, this is where it all begins.

As the Canadian Supreme Court has recognized in upholding the constitutionality of anti-hate legislation, the Holocaust did not begin in the gas chambers – it began with words. This finding has been echoed by the international criminal tribunals in Rwanda and the former Yugoslavia. The importance of this lesson is underscored by the incitement to hate and genocide that continues to emanate from the Iranian regime.

The third lesson is that these Holocaust crimes resulted not only from state-sanctioned incitement to hatred and genocide, but from crimes of indifference, from conspiracies of silence – from the international community as bystander.

As it happens, this year’s Holocaust commemorations take place as the world prepares to mark the 20th anniversary of the Rwandan genocide, when from April to July close to one million Rwandans were murdered. The Rwandan genocide was particularly tragic not only due to the horrors of the genocide itself, but to the fact that it was preventable.

No one can say that we did not know; we knew, but we did not act.

Today, we know but have yet to act to stop the slaughter of civilians in Syria, ignoring the lessons of history and mocking the Responsibility to Protect doctrine.

Let there be no mistake about it: Indifference and inaction always mean coming down on the side of the victimizer, never the victim. In the face of evil, indifference is acquiescence.

The fourth enduring lesson of the Holocaust is that it was made possible not only because of the “bureaucratization of genocide,” as Robert Lifton put it, but because of the trahison des clercs – the complicity of the elites – including physicians, church leaders, judges, lawyers, engineers, architects and educators.

Holocaust crimes, then, were also the crimes of the Nuremberg elites.

It is our responsibility, then, to speak truth to power, to hold power accountable to truth, and to ensure that the double entendre of Nuremberg – of the Nuremberg Laws that enshrined racism as well as the Nuremberg Principles that laid the groundwork for prosecuting war crimes – are part of our learning and our legacy.

The fifth lesson concerns the vulnerability of the powerless and the powerlessness of the vulnerable – as found expression in the triad of Nazi racial hygiene: the Sterilization Laws, the Nuremberg Race Laws, and the Euthanasia Program – all of which targeted those “whose lives were not worth living.”

It is revealing, as Prof. Henry Friedlander points out in his work titled “The Origins of Nazi Genocide,” that the first group targeted for killing were the Jewish disabled.

It is our responsibility, then, as citizens of the world, to give voice to the voiceless and to empower the powerless, be they the disabled, poor, elderly, women victimized by violence, or vulnerable children – the most vulnerable of the vulnerable.

Sixth is the tribute that must be paid to the rescuers, the righteous among the nations, of whom Raoul Wallenberg is metaphor and message. Wallenberg, a Swedish non-Jew, saved more Jews in four months in Hungary in 1944 than any single government or organization.

Finally, we must remember – and celebrate – the survivors of the Holocaust, the true heroes of humanity. For they witnessed and endured the worst of inhumanity, but somehow found, in the depths of their own humanity, the courage to go on, to rebuild their lives as they helped build our communities.

And so, together with them we must remember – and pledge – that never again will we be indifferent to incitement and hate; never again will we be silent in the face of evil; never again will we indulge racism and anti-Semitism; never again will we ignore the plight of the vulnerable; and never again will we be indifferent in the face of mass atrocity and impunity.

We will speak up and we will act against racism, against hate, against anti-Semitism, against mass atrocity, against injustice – and against the crime of crimes whose name we should shudder to mention: genocide.

Never again will we see evil and stand idly by.

Irwin Cotler is a Canadian member of Parliament, and a former Canadian justice minister and attorney-general. He is a professor of law (emeritus) at McGill University in Montreal.

How Great Companies Attract Top Talent (China Gorman)

How Great Companies Attract Top Talent

by TalentCulture Team + Guests
January 15, 2014

Written by China Gorman, CEO, Great Place To Work

The start of a new year is an ideal time to reflect upon recent accomplishments and look to the future with optimism. But this year is starting on a particularly high note.

On Thursday Jan 16, our organization reveals the 2014 “100 Best Companies to Work For“ list, in conjunction with our media partner, Fortune Magazine.

And next week, I’ll be discussing the results with the TalentCulture community on #TChat Radio and Twitter.

While there are certainly more “best workplace” lists now than when we started nearly 20 years ago, this list remains the gold standard — largely due to the rigor of our evaluation process. Based on extensive employee surveys and detailed investigation into corporate cultural practices, our data provides a unique look inside stellar organizations, and reveals what sets them apart.

Learning From The Best

Learn more about the list

This year’s list features some exciting stories. Several companies are included for first time — and their identities may surprise you. Also, some veterans on the list are experiencing extraordinary growth, and we’ll talk about characteristics that support those changes. We’ll also look at employment perks that are gaining popularity.

All of this provides a framework for companies who aim to develop more productive, profitable cultures that attract and retain top talent. For those who want a head start, here’s a preview of several best-practice takeaways that can inspire other employers:

Employee Development and Leadership Engagement

In 2014, top organizations are focusing on several high-profile business challenges. For example, last year, some studies exposed disturbingly low employee engagement rates. Best companies are figuring how to engage top performers by helping them map their career paths and develop desired knowledge and skills. They do this through professional development classes, executive coaching and training for managers who need to understand how they can spot potential talent and support employee growth.

At the best small and medium companies, there is a strong sense of inclusion and camaraderie — keys for trust-based cultures. CEOs and senior-level executives make an effort to know employees personally, and they often participate in onboarding, training, recognition and company celebrations. Moreover, leaders seek regular input and feedback from employees about the workplace environment and related decisions. Because their opinions and ideas matter, employees tend to feel deeply invested in their employer and its success.

Enhancing Company Culture

Another pattern among top companies — organizational culture is not just a priority, but a strategic imperative. Employers understand that a strong culture attracts the right kind employees. We see this with both large and small companies, from Google (last year’s top pick among large companies) to much smaller Badger Mining Corp.

When employee and employer values and visions align, we see companies succeeding in retention, profitability and innovation. Best practices in achieving a cultural fit include interview questions that assess a candidate’s alignment with company values, multiple interview rounds, and simulated work experiences to get a sense of candidates’ abilities and interpersonal style before they’re hired.

Also on the culture front, top employers are serious about creating a fun, celebratory environment that’s meaningful to employees. A variety of engaging practices and eventsare often integrated into daily work life, punctuated by big celebrations once or twice a year. From simple “Random Acts of Fun” to all-hands offsite trips to Maui, the best companies constantly push themselves to find new ways to foster lighthearted bonding and workplace joy.

Generational Factors

Another emerging trend — employers are positioning themselves for long-term leadership success by integrating demographic changes into their talent strategy. Succession planning is essential, as boomers retire and younger employees rise through the ranks. Tying into company culture and engagement, employers are looking at ways to involve younger employees and keep them committed and loyal. We see this manifested in new cultural norms and development practices, and in recruiting efforts that emphasize cultural fit.

This is just a taste of what employers everywhere can learn from the 100 Best Places to Work. I hope you’ll join me as I share more details, and discuss this with the TalentCulture community next week at #TChat Events!

(About the Author: China Gorman is CEO of Great Place to Work, a global human resources consulting, research and training firm, specializing in organizational trust. An experienced leader and sought-after thought leader in the human resources domain, China has served as COO of the Society of Human Resource Management, CEO of CMG Group, and President of DBM North America and Lee Hecht Harrison.)

(Editor’s Note: This post was adapted with permission from an article written for Recruiter.com, and republished by the Great Place to Work blog.)

(Also Note: To discuss World of Work topics like this with theTalentCulture community, join our online #TChat Events each Wednesday, from 6:30-8pm ET. Everyone is welcome at events, or join our ongoing Twitter conversation anytime. Learn more…)

BOLD: Defying the Traditional Workplace Culture (Rich Sheridan)

BOLD: Defying the Traditional Workplace Culture

Open and collaborative workspaces are a hot and controversial topic these days. A recent article in Fast Company declared they don’t work, supported by many experts and the writer references others who say they were an “idea devised by Satan in the deepest caverns of hell”. Psychologists backed up the claims with well-researched data. Susan Cain’s thoughtful writing on the power of introverts emphatically outlines the need for private, quiet office space. If you wish to avoid such an open office environment, I have just supplied all the material you need to defeat such an initiative in your company. Print out the article, buy the book, hand it to your boss and say, “see, I told you it would never work and here is the proof, from experts, supported by real data.”

Then you should stop reading this article.

I am here to offer an alternative view based on 14 years of experience and overwhelmingly tangible results. In my high school science classes, I learned that a theorem lasts only until a counter-proof can be discovered. I offer that counter-proof.

Welcome to 12-year-old Menlo Innovations, a one-room schoolhouse for innovation filled with good kindergartners.  The office has no walls, offices, cubes or doors. There is no gifted C-suite (I sit out in the room with everyone else).  The space is open, flexible, regularly “re-designed” by the team at their whim and whimsy, and filled with the noise of work and human energy. It is a bit messy, at first glance seemingly chaotic, but on closer inspection and understanding, operating with a rigor and discipline unprecedented in our industry.

Our pursuit? The business value of joy.

The Menlo team works in pairs, two to a computer, collaborating all day long at the same task at the same time. The pairs are assigned and they are switched every five working days. As we are a custom software design and development firm that does contract work for our clients, the room is filled with programmers, designers, quality advocates, and project managers. They sit shoulder-to-shoulder having chosen throughout our history to push our lightweight five-foot aluminum work tables side-to-side and front-to-front so that even the pairs can be close to one another. Project team members do not have their own table, chair or computer to call their own. The team goes to the work; the work doesn’t come to them.

What is the difference between Menlo and other attempts in the realm of open office experimentation?  We didn’t build an open and collaborative workspace, we built an open and collaborative culture.

To build a culture you must align three basic elements of your business: the world’s outside perception of the company, your company’s inside reality, and the hearts of the company’s visionary leaders.

 We didn’t build an open and collaborative workspace, we built an open and collaborative culture.

Most companies operate in the “default culture” of:

-       Who did we hire?

-       What attitudes did they bring today?

-       What behaviors do we tolerate?

At Menlo, our recruiting and interviewing first selects for “fit for culture”. We test for good kindergarten skills. An Inc. magazine cover story on our interview process in July, 2011 gives you a peek inside our weird approach. In short, we simulate our work environment during an interview where we don’t ask any questions but rather run straightforward collaboration exercises where candidates pair with one another, twenty minutes at a time while my team watches.

To build a culture you must align three basic elements of your business: the world’s outside perception of the company, your company’s inside reality, and the hearts of the company’s visionary leaders.

Why would we be willing to “cut our productivity at least in half” to entertain such a crazy work practice? For one simple reason, we want to produce software joy in the world. Most software projects fail to ever see the light of day. Even if they ship, they fail to meet anything close to what people would consider a quality standard that anyone would consider acceptable, or even tolerable.  And even if they work, the majority of users hate the result. We didn’t want to work in an industry where we didn’t have a chance to work with pride, so we changed everything about the way we do our work.

What did we do and what are the reasons?

We eliminated the barriers to human communication by tearing down the walls and putting the team in charge of the space. Why? Because the energy of most teams are defeated in mind-numbing, spirit-draining meetings where they try to get everyone on the same page before retreating to their private offices and getting to the work they love. Then they quickly discover they are operating in total ambiguity and chaos.

We fit our interview to our culture. Why? Most interviews are two people lying to each over for a couple of hours and the newly hired person doesn’t actually discover the company’s culture until the first day on the job. At that point it is usually a race to demoralization long before productivity appears. During our interview, we do work and watch for good kindergarten skills. Our culture is clear from first contact.

We work two to a computer and we switch these assigned pairs every five working days. Why? This fundamentally weird aspect of our culture produces unprecedented quality and productivity. One of the main reasons is that we defeat the traditional “tower of knowledge” organization of our industry that causes bottlenecks everywhere.  Fred Brooks documented this bottleneck well in the Mythical Man Month which stated that if a project is late, you can’t add more people and move any faster. We have defeated Brooks’ Law with such regularity, it is but a faint reminder of a quaint time in our industry. The result? The last time our team recalls a software emergency was 2004! Our phone doesn’t ring with problems and we have no dedicated support team or hot line. We work forty-hour work weeks and never on weekends. There is no work from home component, and when team members go on vacation they are forbidden from checking email.

We do work and watch for good kindergarten skills. Our culture is clear from first contact.

It may surprise you that Menlo is filled with introverts. While I am no expert, I believe this is because introverts prefer fewer deeper relationships and prefer safety to fear in human relationships. They get that here.

We realize that the ideas we are espousing are controversial and many will vilify us for our approach and tell us over and over again why it just won’t work. We find that criticism humorous and energizing. For the inquisitive, we open our doors and welcome you to visit. Last year over 2,500 people in over 340 separate tour groups came from around the world to visit for anywhere from 2 hours to 5 days. What did they come to see?

A palpable, energizing culture that produces results, and joy.